Adventures aplenty with Lonnie

I walked into Jack Steiner’s barbershop on West Street just in time to catch him raving about watching the late Minute Bol’s son play basketball in K.C. Anyone who meanders into Jack’s shop, meaning to get a haircut or not, is immersed in one story after another, usually to do with sports.
Perched on the spare chair was Lonnie Bratcher, an attentive sponge — as if he had a choice.
I slapped Lonnie on the shoulder, and a big grin spread over his face, a bit more furrowed than it was when we first met more than 40 years ago and the result of many hours in the outdoors.
Some folks in Moran will remember when Lonnie coached at Marmaton Valley; that’s how we met. I was writing sports then, when it was just Emerson Lynn and I doing most of the reporting for the Register. We took a quick liking to each other.
Interviews often turned to more than about what he coached. He liked to fish and trap; so did I. In a more sophisticated setting we would have been termed aficionados of outdoor pursuits. But, we were anything but sophisticated, as you’re about the learn.
Our first venture was to put out a line of traps near Moran. Lonnie didn’t mind rising early and we figured he could run the traps before going to school.
Muskrats were a target. Most ponds were infested with the barn rats’ cousins, the main difference being they have a rich, dark brown coat of dark fur that can bring a few bucks per pelt. We also dropped some traps into a quarry north of town.
All was going well until one morning Lonnie came on a skunk in a quarry set. He was home early enough to skin the critter, he figured, and it being cold, he went to work in the basement of the Bratchers’ two-story house. A slip of his knife released the pungent odor for which skunks are famous; it quickly wafted its way throughout the house. Wife Betty wasn’t a happy camper for quite some time afterward.
When spring rolled around, we took to pond-jumping, which often produced nice stringers of bass. Both of us being competitive we’d be driving down a country road, roll up to a pond, slam on the brakes and before flying gravel had settled, we were loosing lures trying to be the first to entice a bass.
Spring also found us plucking morels from undergrowth on a hill east of the old Santa Fe Lake. A time or two we filled a paper grocery bag or two with the delicious fungi.

LONNIE AND Betty now live in a rural hide-away a few miles outside of Buffalo, he having completed terms in coaching and administration at several schools.